Lakhs of Andhra Pradesh natives returning to Hyderabad after Sankranti festivities found themselves in bumper-to-bumper traffic on NH-65 (Hyderabad-Vijayawada) in the district on Sunday.
A police officer on duty at Narketpally described the scenes as “almost unprecedented. Traffic moved like a stream for hours, but there were no jams.” Narketpally is the merging point in Nalgonda, with traffic volume from both sides — Guntur, Tirupati and Chennai via the Addanki State highway; and Vijayawada via the national highway.
On Sunday, traffic count started to increase around noon time. Gradually, vehicular speeds too reduced, but after 3 p.m., traffic after exiting Narketpally almost hit a slow constant speed. About 10 km to Chityal, and then 25 km till the Pantangi toll plaza at Chotuppal, traffic movement was at its peak in the evening. Besides the volume of traffic on the highway, traffic bottlenecks at places like Kattangur and Kethepally were reported for reasons of narrow mainways, where there are diversions to major villages and towns, queue accumulation at Kethepally toll plaza, and barricades and speed stoppers.
From reports available at around 7 p.m., toll plaza officials at Choutuppal said they have witnessed a 20% rise in traffic, about 35,000 passenger car unit/day being its measure, as against its capacity design of 60,000 PCU. “Because of increased FASTag compliance, there are no traffic jams at Kethepally or Pantangi toll plazas. Even with a continuous and floating traffic, the constant queue length was only about 300 metres,” an official said.
According to police officials in Chityal, which witnessed a bumper-to-bumper traffic for at least 15 km for about three hours on the day, “It took at least one hour to reach Choutuppal, at a distance of 25 km, the usual time being about 20 minutes.”
Police officials at Kethepally, Kattangur, Narketpally, Chityal and Choutuppal also added that the peak hour traffic was between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., and the vehicular speeds increased later. The toll plaza near Madgulapally on the Narketpally-Addanki State highway, which is not equipped with FASTag facility, had queues for at least a kilometre. Its officials said the vehicular count was about 10,000, which is 20% more than the usual.